Railway Protection Force sets up dedicated narcotics cell as drug trafficking crackdown intensified

The Railway Protection Force has set up a dedicated narcotics cell to target the use of India’s vast railway network for drug trafficking and is preparing to formalise its partnership with the Narcotics Control Bureau through an MoU covering intelligence sharing, training and joint operations. The move marks a sharper institutional response to traffickers using trains and railway infrastructure to move narcotics across states, with enforcement agencies increasingly seeking to trace entire networks rather than stopping at individual seizures and couriers.

NCB Director General Anurag Garg disclosed the formation of the specialised RPF cell during the third National Conference of Anti-Narcotics Task Force heads of states and Union Territories. The two-day conference in New Delhi brought together anti-narcotics officials from 36 states and Union Territories and concluded Wednesday.

RPF-NCB partnership

The proposed agreement between the two agencies is intended to institutionalise cooperation instead of leaving coordination to individual operations. “The proposed MoU between the NCB and RPF will institutionalise capacity building, exchange of information and joint operations between the two agencies,” the NCB said Thursday.

The arrangement assumes significance because trains offer traffickers a sprawling interstate transport network, with routes and transit points changing as enforcement increases in particular areas. The RPF’s nationwide presence at railway stations and on trains gives it access to passenger and movement patterns, while the NCB can connect individual seizures with wider interstate and organised trafficking networks.

The RPF is not new to narcotics enforcement. Its personnel have been empowered to conduct searches, seizures and arrests under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act since 2019, and the force has run a focused anti-drug drive under “Operation NARCOS” to detect narcotics being transported through the railway system.

Focus shifts beyond seizures

The creation of the cell comes as the Centre seeks to change the way agencies approach narcotics enforcement, moving beyond the quantity of drugs seized to identifying financiers, suppliers, transporters and other links in trafficking chains. Union Home Minister Amit Shah told the anti-narcotics conference this week that enforcement agencies needed to move from a seizure-centric approach towards dismantling trafficking networks and cartels.

The government has set December 31, 2029, as its target for uprooting the drug trade, with specialised capabilities being developed across enforcement agencies. Its Narcotics Control Vision Document for 2026-29 lays down a three-year roadmap centred on stronger inter-agency coordination, intelligence-led operations, financial investigations and action against emerging forms of drug trafficking.

The Centre has also strengthened the four-tier Narco-Coordination Centre mechanism, or NCORD, which brings together central and state agencies involved in combating narcotics. A Joint Coordination Committee headed by the NCB Director General monitors significant drug investigations, including cases involving narco-terrorism.

Railways a key trafficking route

The railway network has long been identified as one of the channels used to transport narcotics across the country. Traffickers can exploit the scale of the system, enormous passenger volumes and frequent interstate movement, while routes considered vulnerable can shift depending on enforcement activity.

Under Operation NARCOS, the RPF has conducted intensified checks on trains and at identified trafficking hotspots in coordination with the NCB and other law-enforcement agencies. The dedicated cell is expected to give that effort a permanent specialised structure, allowing information from seizures in different railway zones to be analysed and shared more systematically.

The planned RPF-NCB agreement could also help connect seizures made aboard trains with investigations taking place elsewhere in the country. Rather than treating a courier caught with narcotics as the end of an operation, agencies are increasingly being asked to follow the supply chain backwards to suppliers and financiers and forward to distributors and recipients.

Building specialised anti-drug forces

The initiative is part of a wider attempt to strengthen India’s anti-narcotics enforcement architecture. The NCB has expanded its regional and zonal footprint while the Centre has pushed state and central agencies towards specialised anti-drug capabilities and greater exchange of intelligence.

For the Railways, the dedicated narcotics cell brings drug enforcement into a more structured framework. Once the MoU with the NCB is signed, the two agencies are expected to have a formal mechanism for training personnel, exchanging actionable intelligence and mounting coordinated operations against networks using trains to move narcotics across the country.